


Still-frame Scenarios

by SilvCyanide



Series: Still-frame Scenarios [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, I will add tags with each new story, M/M, Magic, Mermaids, One-Shot, Slavery, Words have power
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 04:59:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9107623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilvCyanide/pseuds/SilvCyanide
Summary: A series of one-shots that are really just snapshots of the plots of various AU that I thought up but don't have the confidence to finish if I wrote them as a long story.If you read them and would like to adopt them and turn them into full stories, by all means please! Go ahead! Just tell me so I can read it when it comes out?1. Mermaid AU - Human(?)!Oikawa/Merman!Iwaizumi2. Wordsmith AU - Human!Oikawa/Mage!Iwaizumi3. Yōkai AU - Yōkai!Oikawa/Human!Iwaizumi4. Summoning AU - Summoner!Oikawa/Familiar!Iwaizumi





	1. Mermaid AU

"Young master, where are you!"

"Young master, please don't run around!"

"Young master, please show yourself!"

"Young master!"

Many people looked up in curious interest at the sight of several guards dressed neatly in the uniform of the Oikawa house rushing around the market square like headless chicken, frantic looks on their faces as they called out for their missing young master. Most of the stall owners and their customers looked away after a few seconds in disinterest, all too used to such a scene. It was common knowledge that the young master of the Oikawa house was fond of slipping away from his bodyguards whenever he left the house for a walk to head around on his own. Seeing as the young master held little interest in politics and preferred to go outside to wander, though all of his tutors remarked that he had the brilliant intelligence and cunning for it, it came as little surprise that it happened nearly every day.

Tooru peeked out from behind a cobblestone wall, barely a sliver of his body visible as he watched his bodyguards hurry off into another direction, the calls of his name fading into the distance. Already, he had changed out of his fine clothes into a spare, less extravagant outfit and he tugged the hood of his cloak lower down to cover his face. It was lucky that he was born with ordinary brown hair unlike some of the nobility, or else he might have to dye his hair to avoid detection, and wouldn't that be a bother. His eyes, however, were a pain. They were an almost luminescent shade of turquoise blue, and he had to take special care so nobody saw them. Many had complimented him on how beautiful his eyes were, but he had always found it odd. Nobody in his family had blue eyes, so it was a mystery why he was born with them, and such a limpid blue too.

As soon as the sounds of his bodyguards couldn't be heard any longer, Tooru stepped out from behind the wall, adjusted his shirt and walked in the opposite direction, towards the place where many people called the 'Underground'. It was named that, not because it was located in the earth, but rather because of what this place dealt in in terms of merchandise. Black market goods, drugs, the body parts of non-humans such as elves, and most majorly - slaves.

There wasn't anything eye-popping about owning slaves, and most nobles were expected to own a few slaves as a sign of their status. Some were to clean the house, feed the animals, some were to do manual labour such as building a lavish residence for their lords, some were to act as house slaves and warm the beds of their masters at nights - those were the lucky ones - and a few 'rarer' slaves were to act as decoration, symbols of wealth and influence. 

Tooru's family owned quite a few slaves, and they even had two non-human slaves that were there usually purely for decoration, but sometimes his father would call one up to his bedchamber. They were two pretty elf girls, and Tooru felt they were rather pitiful, but he couldn't do anything to help them except slip them some extra food now and then. Personally, Tooru didn't fancy the idea of slaves all that much, the notion that you could own another person was not much to his taste, however, his father was expecting him to purchase a slave of his own or he would suffer contempt from the other nobles for being soft-hearted and a 'filth-lover'. His mother would have been on his side but she had passed away giving birth to him.

There was news about a new, rare slave being up for auction at the 'Underground' today, one of the merfolk, and supposedly he was quite stunning, with raven hair, chartreuse eyes and olive skin, with a tail that matched his eyes. He was expected to fetch a high price, and Tooru's father had told him to try and purchase him, to elevate their family's status among the elite with another 'rare item'. Little did he know that Tooru wasn't planning on trying very hard to get him, and he was planning on sitting back and entertaining himself with watching the other nobles fight for him instead.

He walked into the seedy auction house and paid the entry fee of ten gold coins, upon which he collected a mask and immediately placed it on his face. Although this auction house didn't seem very reliable according to rumours, it was in fact one of the most reputable as it had a fair and just policy. It was only due to the fact that it dealt in slave trafficking that gave it its reputation, well-deserved or not. Members of the nobility often frequented this auction house, since masks would be provided that ensured anonymity, and the goods placed for auction here were of higher quality than anywhere else.

Tooru settled down in a plush seat on the second floor, watching the auctioneer as he introduced the very first product. It was a diamond studded bracelet, inlaid with rubies and edged with mother-of-pearl. Immediately there were many sighs of desire from the ladies within the crowd as they admired the beautiful design, and the prices increased to a large amount very rapidly.

Still, many of the other people seated in the large auction hall hadn't even so much as taken a second glance at it, and it was plainly obvious they were here to try and acquire the main star of the show.

Tooru let his attention wander after the first item went to a fat lady in a yellow dress with an annoying laugh, vaguely resembling that of a pig's, barely registering the next items that went up. His attention drifted back when the slaves started to be auctioned, and he watched with a half-lidded gaze as a short boy with unruly orange hair and a pair of pitch black wings sprouting from his back was sold to a hooded figure with strands of black hair framing their face and a pair of flint-coloured eyes. The next slave, a fae with silvery locks and a beauty mark under one eye was sold to a man with cropped hair and dressed in black clothes lined with orange.

Finally though, the main star of the auction was to be presented, and four burly men pushed a tank filled to the brim with water from behind the stage curtains to the centre of the stage. Instantly there were loud gasps resounding through the auction hall as the eyes of every person there locked onto the figure sitting curled up in the tank. The merman was cuffed by his neck, wrists and tail and the chains trailed out of the tank to wrap around the base of its stand. Because of the small size, the merman had to sit with his tail folded in front of him, but that didn't prevent the beautiful scales lining his tail from being shown off. The eyes of many on the scene were filled with desire, and their bodies were tense, as if they were preparing to go to war just to acquire him.

Tooru's body, too, tensed up, but it was not due to the appearance of the merman being simply too beautiful like most others were, even if the rumours were true and his bright green eyes, framed by coal-black hair and set in a tanned face with an angular jaw made him look quite mesmerising. Rather, it was due to the fact that the moment he laid eyes on this merman, he was suddenly struck by a strong sense of familiarity, accompanied with the ache of longing and a scene rising to the forefront of his brain.

He was underwater, surrounded by colourful coral, and across him was a boy, with spiky black hair and a long, green tail. The boy - evidently the merman - said something that Tooru was unable to make out and the flashback ended as quickly as it had come.

But it was not possible that it was a flashback, because Tooru had never seen this merman in his life (if he did, you would think he'd have remembered something so unusual), and he'd definitely never been near to the ocean after that incident when he was too young to remember that always left him with an abject fear yet a deep-seated longing for the ocean.

What he knew for sure though, was that for some reason he could not put his finger on, he had to buy this merman.

Already the prices were skyrocketing, and it had already reached several thousand gold, the current bid being 3700 pieces, called out by a sharp-dressed man with olive-green hair, the mask preventing Tooru from ascertaining his identity. Being able to spend 3700 gold on a single slave meant that he was no ordinary person though, since commoners would take one year to be able to earn ten pieces.

The auctioneer called for more bids, raising his hammer in preparation to slam it down. Tooru lifted his paddle with the number 104 on it and called out,

"5000 gold."

Instantly there were sharp inhales from many people, shocked at the bid for this slave. After all, even the rarest of slaves had never been sold for more than 4000 gold before. Tooru could see the man who had bidded 3700 gold look up sharply in his direction but he ignored it impassively. 

Ultimately, though, there were no more bids for the merman, and the auctioneer announced that he had won with 5000 gold. Tooru immediately headed to the back rooms of the auction house to claim his purchase the moment the auction ended.

What he didn't expect, though, was that when his eyes met the merman's after he had taken the mask off, the merman's eyes would unexpectedly widen in shock, and the first words he said to Tooru would be,

"I thought I lost you for good after you disappeared from the ocean."

Tooru just stared at him, startled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oikawa may or may not be human, and Iwaizumi may or may not know Oikawa in the past. 
> 
> If you would like to adopt this idea and want to know what I originally had brainstormed for this plot, just drop me a comment to let me know!
> 
> I may write more for these plot bunnies if I ever get more inspiration.


	2. Wordsmith AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a world where magic is real, but forgotten, a strange man attempts to control Japan and root out all the wordsmiths for his own purposes. Hajime is unwillingly caught up in this, as a descendant of a family of wordsmiths that still retained their magic.

Words, have power.

They are the bridge between mind and matter, and they allow those who know how to wield them to perform amazing feats.

However, with the onset of the technological era, this power slowly faded into obscurity, until only a select number of people in the world even retained the ability to harness this magic, to say nothing of being aware how to use it.

Iwaizumi Hajime is one of the few who does.

His family descended from two of the nobility that existed several centuries ago and the historic texts shelved in the libraries of their ancient residences that conceal a strange power are still wholly intact, precious few from the once massive pool of tomes that managed to survive the onslaught of time.

When he was young, his mother used to tear up pieces of old text, words that still contained a breath of magic and mixed them into his food, and as he swallowed the words and the letters, they swirled together and fused with his body, such that every word spoken had power.

There once were many ways to harness the strength of words, but now only a few remain. One of which, is to focus the magic into a song, and that is what Hajime is partial to. His father prefers commands, sharp and biting, unopposable; his mother likes poems, sorcery woven into the flowing stanzas; his sister wields riddles like tools, the more convoluted they are, the stronger the magic becomes.

Hajime can never hope to use commands, for they require an iron will and despite appearances his is not unbendable, Oikawa is proof of that. He has never been good at poems, because they required a certain amount of delicateness in their utterance that his gruff speech can't emulate very well. There is no need to say anything about riddles, because although he is intelligent, he has never been particularly good at thinking quickly, and that is something absolutely necessary to master riddles.

So, Hajime turns to song, as it is simple but effective. His voice is soothing, a low tenor - not quite a baritone - and the songs he sings have their effects multiplied.

* * *

 

He first meets Oikawa when he is eight, and the younger boy's family has just moved into the empty house down the street. He's catching bugs in the park around the corner and singing softly under his breath. It's a song he's made up, after he gets an idea from some fairy tales he's read, since his magic is stronger when he uses it with something he creates himself, and it's a short tune that consists of a few notes repeated over and over again so it's not particularly powerful. Still, it'll do the job.

_From the green forest_   
_The animals come running_   
_One by one they halt their steps_   
_A rope catching their legs_

_From the wooden hut_   
_The hunter comes strolling_   
_One by one he crouches down_   
_A knife within his hand_

As he sings, tendrils of white curl from his mouth and wrap around the legs of the beetles scurrying across the grass. They freeze in place and he easily picks them up, dropping them in the clear plastic box hanging from his arm. The magic is weak and wears off quickly, and the bugs quickly regain the ability to move. However, by this point they have all been captured and Hajime brushes the dirt off his hands.

As he heads deeper into the small forest beside the park, a soft crying enters his ears and he turns around a tree to find a brown-haired boy sitting on a tree root, a bloody gash on his knee. His face is covered in tears and mucus, and he looks like a complete mess. Hajime's first impression of the boy is an ugly crybaby.

Hajime stares at the boy, who stares back at him with teary eyes, and says with all the tact of an eight year-old, "Are you okay? Did you trip and fall down? You know, you look really ugly when you cry."

The boy cries even harder, snapping at him in a choked voice and smacks his hand away when Hajime tries to help him up.

"No! Go away! I don't like you, you're mean!"

Hajime scratches the back of his head, not the best at talking with other kids as even at that young of an age his blunt personality has brought more than one child close to tears (one actually did cry).

"Hey," he begins slowly, a thought slowly forming in his head, "I'm sorry for making fun of your face. What if I heal your leg for you? Will you forgive me then?"

The boy looks up this time, fat tears still trickling down his cheek and his hair a rumpled mess but he looks curious now, and he asks Hajime hesitantly,

"You can really fix my leg? I'll forgive you if you do."

The boy shifts away from where he's tucked between the tree and a spiky bush, just enough so that Hajime can plop himself down beside him, box of bugs carefully set to the side.

He brings a hand over the boy's still bleeding knee so that it hovers a centimetre from the surface, takes a deep breath, and begins singing. It's a nursery rhyme his mother sang to him every time he fell down and wouldn't stop crying from injuring himself, and when he sees that it can close all the cuts and bruises he's acquired, he'd begged his mom to teach it to him too.

_Little child, little child_   
_Don't you cry_   
_Little child, little child_   
_Hush your voice_

_All these cuts_   
_All these bruises_   
_Will go away soon_   
_So be strong_

_Little child, little child_   
_Don't you cry_   
_Little child, little child_   
_All is fine_

As he sings, a bright white light engulfs his hand and sends a buzzing, tingling feeling up his arm. Hajime quickly moves his hand over the boy's wound, still quietly repeating that same song and thin wisps of steam rise up as the gash slowly seals itself closed, only a thin silvery scar and bits of flaky, dried blood left behind to show that it had ever existed in the first place.

The boy stares at his hand with wide eyes as the light fades into nonexistence and Hajime rubs his arm self-consciously. Did he do something wrong...?

"That was so cool! Are you an alien?! Is this what aliens are able to do? Can you teach me?!"

The boy bursts out in excitement, tongue tripping over itself as he tried to say everything all at the same time. Hajime's second impression of the boy is that he's a weird alien kid. But that's okay, because he's not quite normal himself and he thinks they could be friends.

Hajime sticks out a hand at the boy, interrupting his passionate spiel on how cool aliens are, and says in a loud voice,

"My name's Iwaizumi Hajime. D'you want to be my friend?"

The boy looks at him shyly, before taking that hand and saying,

"I'm Oikawa Tooru, and I would like to be your friend."

Hajime's third impression of Oikawa Tooru is that he is a cute boy.

* * *

 

The next time Hajime ever uses magic in front of Tooru, they are in middle school. His mother had warned him to never let anybody know he was a wordsmith after he had introduced Tooru as his new friend, not even Tooru himself, as if they were discovered, they would be inviting a lot of trouble from those who wanted to take advantage of their power. So, as Hajime stopped using magic in front of Tooru, Tooru also forgot that magic even existed in the first place, and shrugged that day's event off as a product of his overactive imagination. Hajime can't say he's happy keeping such a big secret from his best friend but he knows it's for the best.

He's never sung again in public, because of the magic that's woven into his every word, and Tooru regularly teases him about his supposedly horrible singing voice. Hajime wants to defend himself but he can't do that without giving himself away, so he settles for thumping Tooru on the head instead.

But, this time, he had no other option but to sing.

He's standing almost halfway across the gym when he sees it happening. Tooru raises an arm to slap Kageyama across the face, too caught up in his anger to think about what exactly he's doing. Hajime knows that Tooru is going to beat himself up over it if he actually strikes Kageyama, but he's too far away to do anything and he won't get there in time. There's no other way - except there is.

Hajime takes a deep breath and opens his mouth with a soft hum, and he feels the familiar tingling feeling prickling his skin as the first line of the song escapes his lips. It's the song he used to sing to catch bugs, freezing them in place long enough for him to pick them up. He's much stronger now, so the song can immobilise bigger things than it could before, and the magic now takes the form of thick glowing ropes instead of thin threads. They wrap around Tooru's arms and legs, rooting him in place, and Hajime - still singing - rushes over to pull Tooru away, leaving a blank-faced Kageyama staring at them in confusion. Hajime has never been more glad that they boy's as dense as he is.

He drags Tooru outside the gym, the taller boy still unable to move, and he knows that Tooru will have plenty of questions to ask, if the way his eyes dart around, comically large as he stares at the intangible but solid ropes binding his limbs.

Once they are out of the gym, Hajime disperses the magic and immediately rounds on Tooru, hissing out furiously,

"What were you thinking, you idiot! If I hadn't stopped you, you might have actually hit him, and we both know you'll heavily regret it in the morning!"

Tooru's not meeting his eyes, but his body posture is guarded, defensive, scared and Hajime knows that he should probably calm down and talk about it rationally with Tooru, but he's too caught up in his tirade to stop right now.

"You dumbass! You don't have to overwork yourself and get so threatened by Kageyama! So what if he's better than you right now?! You can always catch up! Volleyball is a six person sport and you can't play it by yourself. The team with the stronger six is the winner!"

Tooru's eyes widen even though he doesn't say anything and Hajime lets go of his shirt from when he had grabbed Tooru's collar in his anger, Tooru stumbling a few steps backwards after losing the support of Hajime's grip.

There's silence now, punctuated with the pants from Hajime as he tries to catch his breath after his rant. Tooru hangs his head, bangs shadowing his eyes and face, such that Hajime can't discern anything from his expression.

All of a sudden, Tooru jerks up, startling Hajime, and slaps his hands to his cheeks, a resounding smack echoing through the air as his cheeks grow faintly red after the hit. He takes a deep breath, and when he looks up, Hajime knows he'll be fine, because even though his eyes are tearing up and he looks like he's going to start crying any moment, there's a determined look in his eyes, a sliver of steel that refused to bend to anyone's will.

Hajime thumps his back, and Tooru startles, but Hajime ignores it in favour of saying in a low voice, "You'll only lose to him for sure if you give up, so don't ever give up. If you're gonna hit it, hit it until it breaks, right?"

Tooru smiles at him, a thin, brittle smile, but it's genuine, and replies, "Of course."

Yeah, Hajime knows he won't be breaking anytime soon.

* * *

 

The day after that, Tooru basically cornered him and forced Hajime to tell him what those glowing white ropes that bound him the night before were. Hajime curses, because he should have known that even in such an emotional state, Tooru still wouldn't have forgotten such a major thing, and it was foolish thinking to even hope that he had.

So, Hajime explains it in the briefest way possible.

"It's magic."

Of course, Tooru isn't satisfied with that answer, and he hounds Hajime for further information.

"Ehh, Iwa-chan! What do you mean by 'It's magic'? Are you an alien? Did your species land on Earth to try and conquer us but when you saw me you decided that it would be a waste to lose such a pretty face so you decided not to?!"

There's a feeling of deja vu in that question, and Hajime shoves away Tooru's face when it gets too close to his, the taller boy letting out a surprised squawk. He fires back an obligatory, "Who would ever want your shitty face, Trashykawa?"

But ultimately, he's coerced into revealing more about his magic, which led to Tooru singing several different songs horrendously off tune to try and see if he too could perform magic, as if the countless times when he had sung in the showers after training hadn't been enough proof that no, he could not.

Unsurprisingly, nothing happened, and Tooru pouts for a few seconds at disappointment before turning his attention to Hajime and pestering him to cast some magic. Hajime does it simply to shut him up.

_White in the air_   
_Foretelling the coming of snow_   
_The skies grow somber_   
_For there is going to be snow_

_The chill nips the air_   
_The sun runs and hides_   
_Forsaken by the sun_   
_The animals run and hide_

Tooru looks amazed at how the temperature in the air suddenly plummets as Hajime sings, even though it's bright and sunny outside, and the white sparks that burst from Hajime's fingertips cools down the entire rooftop, small white fluffs drifting from nowhere, obviously tiny snowflakes. A thin layer of frost even forms on the water in Tooru's bottle.

Hajime can't help laughing loudly at the look of childish amusement on Tooru's face as he turns this way and that to inspect their surroundings and he stops singing to throw his head back as he laughs. The magic fizzles out, and the rooftop quickly grows warm again.

Even though Tooru knows his biggest secret now, despite his parents warning him never to reveal it to anybody, Hajime can't find it in him to worry about it.

Except maybe for the fact that Tooru's definitely going to pester him to use his magic more often now.

* * *

 Just when Hajime thinks life's going great, in their first year of highschool, everything goes to hell in a handbasket, with literally no forewarning.

One day when he was walking home with Tooru, they passed by an electronics shop, and the televisions on display were playing the news. In the middle of the broadcast, the feed was interrupted and a video played, showing a man wearing a mask standing beside the Prime Minister, glowing blue ropes wrapped around the Prime Minister's body with the guards knocked out cold on the floor.

Hajime's eyes widened when he saw that the man was actually a wordsmith, and that he was casting magic.

He went on to declare that he had taken over Japan, and that he wanted every person like him who could control magic through words to be found and surrendered. Whoever revealed trustworthy information about such individuals would receive a huge reward. He continued on by dangling a necklace with a golden, oval-shaped pendant on it in front of the camera and stating that he already had people in every part of Japan with pendants like that, rooting out wordsmiths, for reasons unknown, before ending the broadcast completely.

As the news resumed, the newscaster now looking flustered as she hurried to report this new story, the people around Hajime and Tooru burst into loud murmurs, and Tooru looked at Hajime in worry. Hajime's hand instinctively reached up to touch the thin chain hanging from his neck.

Every wordsmith had a pendant, and they weren't made of anything special. The thing that set them apart from ordinary charms and trinkets was the fact that they had been enchanted with word magic after a piece of paper containing a copy of the Scripture of Magic was burned and melded together with the material that made up the pendant, and then nurtured by the magic of the wordsmith that carried them.

This made it so that no two pendants were the same, and wordsmiths could recognise which wordsmith a pendant belonged to from the magic signature in the pendant itself. The pendant could literally be anything, and Hajime's is a tiny silver locket he usually wore around his neck and only took off to shower or sleep, given to him at the age of six when he could start using magic.

Without their pendant, a wordsmith simply couldn't cast any spells as they lacked the vital amplifier the Scripture provided so that their spells would be strong enough to have an impact. Unless the wordsmith was strong enough to cast magic without the pendant (which was basically impossible), a wordsmith that lost their pendant was no different than an ordinary human.

Two wordsmiths would be able to recognise each other if they were close to each other, as their pendants would react and let out a burst of magical energy, before flaring brightly momentarily. Of course, such a reaction wouldn't happen if the two pendants were made by the same person, as the pendants of families usually were, so Hajime's had never lit up around his parents or sister.

However, it definitely would light up around this man's pendants just like it had when just weeks ago they had played against Shiratorizawa in a practice match and he had met their setter, who's name was Semi-san if he remembered correctly, and both their pendants gave off light akin to a miniature flash-bang. There was a silent but mutual agreement to not reveal the other. It was a hassle trying to cover the whole incident with a believable excuse though.

There were two choices Hajime could make. One, hide away his pendant in his house and never use magic until it was safe to do so - because Hajime didn't believe for one second that the man didn't have any evil intentions - or two, he could still keep his pendant on him but pray that he never ran into one of the man's subordinates.

Regardless, something big was happening to Japan, something that involved wordsmiths (Tooru would be dragged in too since he knew about him), and Hajime didn't like it one bit. He only wished that nothing major would happen to anyone close to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is also up for adoption. Same as the previous chapter, leave a comment to let me know, because I want to see how people expand on this idea.


End file.
